First Flight
by silvermoonsparkling
Summary: Chapter 2 now up... My first POTC fic. Rated T for now, rating might go up but probably not. Basically how Jack became Captain Jack Sparrow, the famous pirate. R&R please :D
1. Looking forward, Looking back

He didn't know his own name. A little boy slouching along a street ripe with dirt, dark little head down, largely unnoticable.

But there was someone watching him.

She saw the way he shuffled his feet as if moving was an effort. He kept his eyes down and hands shoved in pockets to avoid being noticed. But she had waited so long to see him. She was dying.

How could she be sure it was the right boy? She couldn't. All she had was the hope and the beads and a vague memory of a terrible night nine years ago.

She had been sleeping at first, and had been woken by loud crashing noises. She remembered screaming for her nurse and being terrified. Then the men had come into her bedroom. They were big and dirty and terrifying. She just stood there and screamed and screamed and screamed, and nobody came. Then one of the men spoke to her. He called her "love" and "darling" and "pretty one." He held her down to the bed and ripped her nightdress. The weight of his body pressed down on hers. She gasped for breath. He stank of sweat and ale and rank filth, and the stench choked her as she struggled in vain. All she could remember after that was the pain, and the shock, and the blood. So much blood! She cried and cried until she had nothing left to cry and she fell asleep, naked and exhausted, on her red-spotted sheets.

In the morning her mother found what she had done. It was terrible. She was shamed and disowned by her family. To lie with a pirate, the worst sin imaginable. She was a whore, a harlot, a hussy. The family's reputation was tarred and it was all her fault. She was confused and distraught and it still hurt where the blood had flowed. She was a child, barely twelve years old. She was a child, and her family shunned her. Left her on the streets to die. Now she wandered, begging food, stealing when she got hungry enough. She walked miles and miles, anywhere to get away from the disapproving stares and angry threats of the people she used to know. It was too dangerous to stay, she knew, and she found her way to the East End of London. There were lots of beggar-children here. It was easier to find shelter, but food was scarce. She had always been a timid girl and shied away from the other children as though afraid of them. Her stomach began to swell and she was desparately hungry all the time. She could feel a hard lump inside of her, which made strange fluttery movements every now and again. She was scared of it. Maybe it was a devil. It made her weary and weighed her down so she could not walk as far as before. Eventually she became so exhausted she just lay down under a bridge and stayed there, falling asleep without looking to see if anyone would find her, nor caring neither.

She woke up suddenly to find a boy a few years older than herself leaning bent over her face. She jumped and sat up suddenly, backing up against the wall, her heart beating violently. She remembered the pirate's face as he forced himself on her and she screamed. The boy stood up and backed away.

"I wasn't going to hurt you," he said, looking scared. "I wanted to help you, like. Don't you know you've got a babby inside of you?" but Mary continued to scream and he fled. After he was gone she allowed herself to collapse again, sobbing with hunger and fear and shame. A few days later he was back, with a girl. Mary was still cautious of the boy, but she let the girl come closer to her.

"What's your name?" she asked quietly, as if trying not to scare her. Mary was cautious. Was this a trap?

"Hettie," she answered. "What do you want from me?"

"My name is Louisa May," the girl said. "And that is Edward. We want to help you."

"He said I had a baby inside of me..." Mary pointed to Edward, bewildered.

"Yes," Louisa May nodded.

"But... how?" Mary was scared. She didn't know anything about babies. Her mother had always told her she would find out when she got married. Now it seemed she was about to find out a lot sooner. Suddenly a great pain shot through her body and she doubled up, wondering if this was what it felt like to die from hunger. Louisa May looked worried.

"The baby's coming _now_!"

What felt like an infinitely long time later, Mary sat cradling her baby in her arms, feeling exhausted, amazed and terrified. The baby was covered in blood and dirt where he had fallen to the ground. She felt embarrassed at his nakedness and wished for something to cover him with. He was nothing like babies she had seen before, all pink and plump and washed, he was slippery and screaming and scrawny like a rat. She didn't want him, didn't know what she was supposed to do with him, and yet she couldn't abandon him like her family had abandoned her. Louisa May showed her how to feed him, and although she felt embarrassed and indecent suckling the infant in front of Edward, she was too exhausted to care.

"Jack," she whispered as he fell contentedly asleep. "I'll call him Jack."


	2. The wonder of memory

-A/N-  
Hey, it's just gone midnight on Christmas Eve... so call me Father Christmas :P  
I don't own Jack's character or anything to do with him, this is my interpretation. Should probably include that on Chapter 1 :S The song I used at the end is an old English folk song called Jackaroe.  
Oh - and Happy Christmas   
-- 

She could bear it no longer and let a wordless cry into the street. He turned round, suddenly alert, ready to defend himself. She felt small and weak in his gaze. Those eight-year old eyes had seen a lot, and she almost cowered from his fierceness.

"Jack..." her tired voice cracked through the twilight air.

"Who are you?" his voice was surprising; it exposed him for what he was, a frightened child. He knew she was weaker than himself, or he would have run by now. But something about her held him curious. The way she stood, hunched over like she was in pain - or she had been beaten down, time and again, until she became small and insignificant like everybody believed she was. She was just another street child - not so much a child. She looked old to the boy, about twenty maybe. He felt a yearning curiosity, as he always did, for her story. He liked to know what had become of people. What had happened to them to make them who they were. And she was strange, she didn't seem to want to hurt him. She didn't seem afraid of him, even. She was opening her hand to him in a gesture of friendliness - or was she? He edged closer, wary of traps but wanting intensely to know who she was, and what she was holding.

"I'm not going to hurt you," she walked up to him and he backed away. She resisted the urge to run after him, remembering her wary behaviour when she was first cast out alone. She decided to put the beads on the ground and step backwards, watching to see what he would do. It was cold and fog was beginning to creep into the streets. Mary shivered and clasped her thin shawl closer around her shoulders. She watched him closely as he gingerly picked up one of the beads, saw his eyes widen in recognition. He plucked them from the ground one by one and rolled them in his fingertips, opening his hand to reveal their disappearance. His old trick. Now they were safe. But how had she got them? Suddenly the first words she had spoken to him made sense.

"What did you call me?" his eyes were wide open now, full of wonder.

"Jack." she said, her head bowed. She sensed he was afraid of her no longer but she still refrained from moving closer. She had waited so long for this moment and she was not about to jeopardise it now.

"Jack..." he whispered the word and stared into the distance. "Jack..." he rolled the name around his mouth as though tasting it. "How did you... where did you...?"

"I'm your mother." a simple statement which, to her, explained everything. But the boy was not content. He stared at her with searching eyes. Something strange was happening in his mind.

For as long as he could remember it had just been him, on his own, looking out for himself. His life had been like a game, though he didn't realise it. It was what he did. Sometimes there were other children. He learned quickly who to trust, and the list wasn't long. The younger ones would join in with his games, waging combat on each other for food or shelter or just for fun. The older ones let him alone unless he had something they wanted. Mostly he didn't. All he owned were his treasures; some wooden beads, worn and smooth from how much he played with them in his fingers. He didn't know where he'd got them from or what they meant, but it soothed him to roll them around in his palms, to make them disappear by hiding them in his sleeve with a wave of his fingers.

Some street children stayed together in one place, but the boy could never settle. He didn't feel comfortable sleeping in the same place for too long. It meant people knew where to find you, and that could be dangerous. The one thing he liked was the sky. It was big and open and there was nowhere to hide, which meant there was nothing to be scared of. It never changed wherever he lay his head at night, except for the moon. He felt drawn to the moon and the sunset. He loved to watch the sunset. The way the sun turned the whole sky blood-red as it burned its way through the clouds to disappear. It was like magic, although he knew magic wasn't real. It was an illusion, like his bead-hiding trick, and every time he watched the sunset he wondered where the sun went.

But lately things had been strange. He had had the feeling of being watched a lot of the time, and had kept moving even more then usual in an attempt to put off his pursuers. And then one night someone had stolen his beads. He couldn't understand why - they were nothing special to anybody else. But now this woman was here and she had his beads. And she called him Jack. The name stirred something in his memory. Mother... another blurry just-out-of-reach thought. About a year ago he had joined forces with some boys in a fight over something he'd forgotten. They had made a fire and talked. Some of the children remembered their families. They had spoken about mothers and fathers. Some of them had brothers or sisters. And Jack... who was Jack? The woman; who called herself his mother; she had called him Jack. Was Jack his name? He had never had a name that he could remember, never had a need for one. He didn't stay in the same place for long enough, never made any friends.

Mary began to sing softly,

_"There was a wealthy merchant,  
In London he did dwell  
__He had a lovely daughter,  
__The truth to you I'll tell  
__Oh the truth to you I'll tell_

_"She had sweethearts a-plenty  
And men of high degree_  
_There was none but Jack the sailor,  
__Her true love e'er could be  
__Oh her true love e'er could be_ _"Now Jackie's gone a-sailing  
With trouble on his mind  
To leave his native country__And his darling girl behind  
__Oh, his darling girl behind..."_


End file.
